A collection of reviews which appear in full on Pop Culture Maniacs.
Pop Culture Maniacs
Until a few weeks ago, I'd never heard of the video game Iron Lung. Neither had I heard of the YouTube channel Markiplier, much less Mark Fischbach, whose name it bears. His feature film debut (which he wrote, directed, edited, and starred in) only came to my attention
Pop Culture Maniacs
While the zombie movie refuses to die, it's certainly not thriving. In the years since the onset of COVID-19, only a handful of films featuring the archetypal monster in one form or another get released every year, and vanishingly few cause a stir. It should come as no
Pop Culture Maniacs
“Nothing much was supposed to happen to me. I was supposed to get married, have children, do needlepoint, I guess, then die.”
Pop Culture Maniacs
Sisu has had a strange life. Made by the same team that gave us Rare Exports, it landed fairly quietly at TIFF 2022. Its reception was warm enough, however, to be picked up for distribution. And although its US release didn't light the box office on fire, it
Pop Culture Maniacs
With Longlegs, director Osgood Perkins burst onto the scene. It may have been his fourth movie, but it represented a stark evolution of his style into something more technically precise, more tonally playful, while still staring into the darkness. That shift, combined with Neon's brilliant marketing and audience
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The first movie from Eli Roth's new production studio, The Horror Section, was Jimmy and Stiggs, a jaw dropping descent into goopy, neon madness. It was a perfect midnight movie that nonetheless played the multiplex. That was all it took to convince me that seeking out the studio&
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"Romans make Romans."
Pop Culture Maniacs
Judging purely by scale, Rabbit Trap could have been made during the depths of the COVID pandemic. Set on an isolated Welsh hillside that gives way to a dense and disorienting forest pushes thoughts of the wider world out of your mind. The cast consists of just four people, one
Pop Culture Maniacs
Between the complications inherent in releasing movies during the COVID pandemic, lending his voice to animated features, and the limited theatrical runs enjoyed by most streaming studio fare, Relay marks Riz Ahmed's return to the screen in a starring role. So it's quite bold that for
Pop Culture Maniacs
Welcome to the year of the romcom! Much has been made of the genre’s disappearance from the theatrical experience. True, they still flood streaming services, with Netflix distributing the best of recent years in Richard Linklater’s Hit Man. But with the exception of Anyone But You, few have
Pop Culture Maniacs
After a couple of fake trailers for amusingly dumb horror flicks, it was a genuine surprise that the opening of the film was shot from Jimmy's perspective. We're along for the ride in real-time as Jimmy putters and mutters about his apartment, doing coke and smoking
Pop Culture Maniacs
True crime has been around for hundreds of years, arising not long after the invention of the printing press. Whether it serves as a warning to the populace that a pleasant neighborhood is no guarantee of safety, or as pure entertainment designed to satiate our innate curiosity about the unfathomable